heels over head
by Adreus
Summary: Four and a hundred hospital visits later, it's kind of embarrassing how in love that boy is. And he doesn't even notice. —Ryoga, his crush on Yuma, and a stranger.


**Notes:** Friends and I were talking about how Ryoga is a professional hospital patient now, so I started thinking like, "Hey, what if there's a stranger there who kind of serves as Ryoga's confidant?" And so this.

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_heels over head_

* * *

Fourteen-year-old Kamishiro Ryoga is so embarrassingly in love, it's actually kind of sad. Watching him is sort of like watching the seasons change: watching winter turn to spring, a rebirth after so long under the weight of darkness; watching spring turn to a bright, illuminative summer with a grand, exciting sun and a smile that doesn't seem to understand that its wearer is trying to hide it; watching overly gleeful summer turn to a bashful autumn, with golden hues and a want for hand-holding. All of this, except that Ryoga is stuck in autumn and doesn't seem to know how to go any further, how to restart the cycle, how to do anything; and similes thrown out the window, every time Ryoga acts on his love—which he seems just a little unawares of—he tends to end up in a hospital bed.

"Back so soon, Ryoga-kun?" she asks him this time, smiling gently, and he grumbles and snatches the juice off her food cart, sipping through the straw angrily. She laughs and checks her watch; she's got some free time, so she sits down in his visitor chair and rests her chin in one of her hands. "Was it Yuma-kun again?"

At that Ryoga squishes his juice box and the drink spills all over him. He doesn't seem to notice. "It's not his fault, I guess, but…" he mutters, and he doesn't look so angry now as he does a little lost, staring at his hand. "He's always getting into trouble."

She's known Ryoga for a few years now. The first time she saw him he was smaller, with wobblier knees and a higher voice, the day he ran into his sister's hospital room and slammed the door shut, drew all the curtains and sunk to the floor and sobbed, not realizing there was someone else there with food on a rolling tray. He was distant for someone his age, and it didn't really suit him, the way that he sauntered out of the hospital, the way he tried to stand with a slouch on purpose, the way he didn't seem to have any friends. The way he didn't smile much, because he's got this lovely little smile, something he only ever got when he spoke to his sister about something nice that happened and how he missed her, but now—well, it's come out more often, and she decides that love looks good on him, because it makes his eyes a little brighter and his smiles a little fuller, and he's… well, he's hopeless, isn't he?

He's hopeless, something that she knows for sure because she talks to him sometimes—she's talked to him in the past, when he came to visit his sister and his sister was asleep, so he talked to her instead; small things, first, like answering her questions of _is that Rio-chan's favorite color_, but then it evolved a little—_tell me about your day, Ryoga-kun, and why do you look so beat up, now_? And she still talks to him now, whenever he's in the hospital himself, because she's the stranger that doesn't tell anyone relevant, so when she chides him and asks why he's here and he grumbles a little, she laughs and tells him it's okay, he doesn't have to say anything, enjoy his pudding—but then he mutters "Yuma," just a name, like it explains everything, and yeah, it actually kind of does.

The first time he told her about Yuma started off as a bit of a disaster, because she didn't seem to understand what he was trying to say.

"An admiring fan?" she tried, when he explained that they dueled a few times and now Yuma won't leave him alone, and he made this face, a scrunched up thing that was positively horrified, and she shook her head, "Not that, then."

"Not at all," he agreed, and at first he didn't expand, and she was about to get up and say she had to get to work—and that's when he started.

"Yuma," he began, with a long, dramatic sigh that could only be taken seriously by other middle schoolers, "has this necklace." And he told her about the necklace, about how he'd held it three times and wore it once and he clutched his own pendant while he talked about it, spun it around in his hands and didn't really look at her. He told her about how annoying Yuma is and how he can't do anything right, how Ryoga got into a fight with some creep because Yuma didn't know how to take care of that thing properly, told her how Yuma is just so—so very _Yuma_, and how it pissed him off that he wouldn't leave him alone, except it sounded more like Yuma was just friendly and wanted to say hi and Ryoga didn't know how to react to it properly.

"How troublesome," she said aloud, patting his head as he groaned in protest, and she wheeled her cart out with a smile as he stared at his pendant in confusion, contemplating perhaps the difference between a pendant and a necklace. "Sounds like this Yuma-kun is quite the character."

He didn't answer her retreating figure, but she saw him again when he came to visit Rio, and she learned even more about Yuma than before, found out about something called "kattobingu" and how Yuma still wouldn't leave him alone, and this time he'd even told him to, dammit, and then Ryoga had to leave because the WDC was going on and he had a semifinal to get to, so she wished him luck and he nodded and stomped out the door, adjusting his collar seriously.

The next time she saw him was the following day.

"Ryoga-kun?" she asked, tilting her head to the side a little, and she had to admit that she almost lived in a box, that she tended to be so busy that she didn't have time to pay attention to duels much, and she apologized for not having seen him.

"I lost to Yuma," he told her mildly.

To which she said, "I'm sorry."

"No," he replied, shaking his head. "…He saved me." And he looked at her in a kind of amazement, smiled like she'd never seen him do before, and he was—gosh, he was trying to _hide it, _but failing miserably and whoever this Yuma is, he's good for him. He's exactly what Ryoga needs.

She decided, "You're here far too often, Ryoga-kun."

"Yeah," he said, and his smile only fled when he had to crinkle his nose at the sight of the hospital food. "I know."

She told him to take care of himself, and that she better not see him there again after he's been discharged—only one more day!—unless it's to visit Rio.

And yet—

"Honestly," she spoke the next day, tapping her foot in distaste and eyeing his bandages, and he scoffed.

"Yuma was in trouble," he said, and that was that, because, he insisted, it wasn't that big of a deal anyway, the wounds would heal and they wouldn't even be that bad, and hospital bills weren't anything new to him, anyway, so—so—"So yeah."

"So," she asks presently, "Would your neighbor happen to be the young man I've heard so much about?"

And—and he hisses at her, his eyes flaring, him looking from left to right and back again to make sure no one else is there. "_No_," he says, and then he shakes himself, because she hasn't really said anything that should get him so riled up, huh, so he appends: "Uh—yeah. That's him." And he pouts. And he crosses his arms. "Whatever."

She does that chuckle again, the one that's become a little secret between them and makes him scowl and maybe flush, and she wonders how many hospital bills equals a single date, and if she was ever so out of touch with herself when she was fourteen.


End file.
